The present invention generally relates to a vehicle odometer. More particularly, the present invention relates to an odometer/tripmeter for tracking business and personal mileage traveled by a vehicle.
Individuals who use their vehicle for both business and personal use typically have to track their mileage for either business or personal trips in order to be reimbursed or keep records for tax purposes. In some cases, an individual may wish to track the total accumulated mileage for their vehicle for each of several different purposes. For example, an individual may wish or need to keep track of the total mileage traveled when using the vehicle for business or personal use so as to properly track business expenses associated with the vehicle over the course of a year or other time period. Such tracking is important to business owners in the United States, who may deduct from their taxes the percentage of the expenses for a business owned or leased vehicle that are related to the business use of the vehicle.
Currently, to keep track of mileage traveled for a particular trip, an individual may either reset a tripmeter in the vehicle or note the currently displayed reading on the vehicle""s tripmeter or odometer prior to commencing the trip. Subsequently, upon completing a trip, the individual must read the tripmeter or odometer and take mental or physical note of the reading prior to driving the vehicle any further distance. Often, however, individuals forget to read the tripmeter or odometer upon commencing or completing the trip or forget to reset the tripmeter in the first place. Thus, current accessories provided in the vehicle for the purpose of tracking vehicle mileage are often of little practical assistance.
The above-noted problems are even more frustrating to those individuals who not only have to track the mileage for each business trip, but also have to add the mileage of each trip to a cumulative annual total. Presently there are no practical, commercially-available vehicle accessories that allow an individual to keep track of cumulative travel distance for a plurality of trips that are not sequentially traveled such as typically occurs when an individual intermittently drives their vehicle for business and personal use. Although most vehicles are now equipped with a tripmeter that tracks mileage separate from the odometer and that can be reset at the beginning of a trip, such tripmeters cannot be stopped from accumulating mileage and then resume accumulating from the last recorded mileage figure. Existing accessories also do not allow for such mileage information to be automtically recorded and transmitted to a computer or other device for tracking mileage for billing, reimbursement, and tax record keeping purposes.
Systems are described in the prior art that enable a driver to track business mileage separately from non-business mileage. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,579,242; 5,497,323; 5,267,159; 5,046,007; 4,875,167; 4,755,832; 4,685,061; 4,593,263; and 4,547,781. However, such systems still require the driver to remember to manually inform the system whether the vehicle is being used for business or personal purposes prior to beginning travel. Also, many such systems include their own housings, multiple push-buttons, and other components such as printers and magnetic disk drives, that make these devices impractical and too expensive to implement in a vehicle.
Accordingly, it is an aspect of the present invention to provide a vehicle tripmeter that solves the above problems by making it much easier for the driver to inform the tripmeter whether or not a trip will be for business or personal purposes. More specifically, it is an aspect of the present invention to provide a vehicle tripmeter that enables a driver to inform the tripmeter that a trip is a business trip while performing a function the driver otherwise must perform to enter the vehicle, start the vehicle, or otherwise operate the vehicle. In addition, it is an aspect of the present invention to provide a vehicle tripmeter for separately tracking business mileage that may be readily integrated into commercially available vehicle trip computers without requiring significant hardware modification.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
To achieve these and other aspects and advantages, the vehicle mileage tracking system of the present invention comprises an input device mounted in the vehicle for receiving one of a first and second door unlock signals, and a vehicle tripmeter coupled to the input device and to a vehicle odometer sensor for accumulating a first accumulated travel distance during vehicle travel following receipt by the input device of the first door unlock signal, and for accumulating a second accumulated travel distance during vehicle travel following receipt by the input device of the second door unlock signal, wherein the tripmeter does not accumulate the first accumulated travel distance during vehicle travel following receipt by the input device of the second door unlock signal. The vehicle mileage tracking system also preferably includes a display coupled to the vehicle tripmeter for selectively displaying the first and second accumulated travel distance. The input device is preferably a receiver for receiving a signal from a remote transmitter.